The library departments of Cornell and Ithaca College have now added a program where members of each of the college’s communities can go to the other’s campus and check out books.

Students will have to apply for a free library card before they can borrow materials.

Cornell currently does have library lending partnerships with other universities. The University participates in the Interlibrary loan program that allows students to receive materials from Cornell’s partner organizations. Ithaca College also has a similar program in place.

“We have had a long-standing relationship with [Ithaca College] on Interlibrary Loan,” said Caitlin Finlay, Director of Interlibrary Services. “This is something that is growing in the resource sharing community. The philosophy of resource sharing is getting these materials to people no matter where they are.”

Because of the proximity of the campuses, members of either institution are now able to go directly to the library and check out books.

“We are so close that the [Interlibrary Services] department was getting people from Ithaca College or vice versa saying ‘Hey I am here can I take out this book?’ and there was no mechanism to do that because that was not the way the system would work,” said Wendy Wilcox, Access Services Librarian.

Cornell additionally has in place a program called Borrow Direct between the Ivy League, Stanford University, University of Chicago, Duke University, John Hopkins University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Borrow Direct was “a means of getting books to each other a little faster,” Wilcox said.

The program “creates a shared catalog” that allows the partners to “move books much quicker to each other,” Wilcox said, “It was really just a faster Interlibrary loan between us.” The “natural extension” of the Borrow Direct evolved to allow members of the partner institutions to take out books directly from the institution.

“Once we had those relationships and people were used to getting those books from Borrow Direct, we would see a lot of people go visit those actual institutions” Wilcox said. “We saw that this was the natural expectation our users wanted.”

Using the existing framework of the Borrow Direct program, Cornell was able to create the new partnership with Ithaca College.

When looking to see other institutions that would be good partners to expand the program, “Ithaca College couldn’t be a better partner,” Wilcox said.

“They are right here in our town, [have an] undergraduate population, and they have several master programs. It just made a lot of sense to get rid of the barriers associated with sharing materials,” Wilcox said.

Wilcox talked of how coordinating programs between libraries takes careful planning. Different schools have different systems of organizing their libraries.

“It was complicated,” Wilcox said. “Figuring out how we would manage the logistics took a lot of time to work out.”

Three people have already gone to Ithaca College to use the service, and several people have come to the Cornell libraries, according to Wilcox. “It is pretty exciting and I think people also agree it makes sense.”

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2018/01/28/ithaca-college-and-cornell-libraries-combine-catalogs/feed/1Ithaca College President Pleaded No Contest To Charge of Sexual Abuse Misdemeanor in 2001http://cornellsun.com/2018/01/18/ithaca-college-president-pleaded-no-contest-to-charge-of-sexual-abuse-misdemeanor-in-2001/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2018/01/18/ithaca-college-president-pleaded-no-contest-to-charge-of-sexual-abuse-misdemeanor-in-2001/#commentsThu, 18 Jan 2018 20:27:45 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=2623008Documents from an anonymous source forwarded to The Ithacan have brought to light a case of sexual abuse from 2001, where Ithaca College president Shirley M. Collado was accused of one count of misdemeanor sexual abuse for an encounter with a patient while she was working as a therapist.

Collado pleaded nolo contendere — no contest — to the case which was filed in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. This meant that she did not admit guilt, but received a sentence as if she had pleaded guilty.

The prosecution said Collado engaged in a sexual relationship with the patient, whose name is not identified in The Ithacan, from May to October 2000 that began when Collado was treating the patient at The Center at the Psychiatric Hospital in Washington D.C.

Collado denies this claim.

“In light of the resurfacing of this legal action, I want to unequivocally state now, as I did then, that the accusations in the court documents are simply not true,” she wrote in a message to IC students, faculty, staff, parents and alumni.

Because Collado pleaded no contest, the trial did not occur.

“I didn’t have the legal resources; I didn’t have the financial resources to, and I didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to really take this on the way I would have preferred,” Collado said in an interview with The Ithacan. “So I took a different route. And like many people in this country, young people in this country, people of color, people who don’t have networks, that was me.”

Collado said her husband committed suicide in 2000, which prompted her to take a leave of absence from her position at The Center, according to the message she sent to the IC community.

“And so, I juggled two very strong and opposing instincts: to defend myself aggressively against a painful, false accusation or to devote my energy to healing from my loss,” she said in her message. “My lawyer recommended pleading no contest to the misdemeanor charge so that I could just end the matter quickly and move on.”

According to The Ithacan, the prosecution said the patient was being treated for post-traumatic stress at The Center as she had experienced sexual abuse in the past. Sharon Marcus-Kurn, the prosecutor for the case, wrote that the patient had been diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder and bipolar disorder.

The patient said she and Collado kissed after most of their therapy meetings. The prosecution brought forward the patient’s claim that on two encounters, Collado “fondled the patient’s buttocks and rubbed her inner thigh and pelvic region,” as stated in The Ithacan.

According to the prosecution, the patient said she, Collado and a man had a three-way sexual encounter in September 2000. The Ithacan reported that Collado and the man said this encounter did not occur.

According to Collado, the patient started to live in her home in late summer or fall 2000 and left by November of that year. Collado disobeyed her contract at The Center by living with the patient, according to The Ithacan.

“I, at that point, was sought out by a patient who I had treated before on the unit who really needed my help and was in crisis and didn’t have a place to stay,” Collado said to The Ithacan.

The patient informed Nora Rowny, social services director for The Center, in November 2000 that once she and Collado started living together, they “became more sexually intimate and that she often slept with Dr. Collado.”

The Ithacan wrote that William Hickey, Collado’s lawyer, called the allegations made by the patient “reckless and spurious” in the defendant’s Memorandum in Aid of Sentencing. Hickey also wrote that the a brain tumor had been identified in the patient and that she had experienced hallucinations.

Judge Frederick Dorsey sentenced Collado to a 30-day suspended sentence, an order to keep away from the patient, 18 months of probation and 80 community service hours, The Ithacan reported.

Ithaca College’s Board of Trustees discussed the search process in a statement to the IC community on Tuesday.

“During the process, we learned of a legal action brought against Dr. Collado, nearly 20 years ago,” the board stated. “We were provided with detailed information regarding this situation, and Dr. Collado was extremely forthright in answering all our questions. Then, as now, she vehemently denied the allegations that were made against her.”

The IC Board of Trustees maintains its “support” of Collado, according to the statement.

“As we stated earlier, Dr. Collado has our full support,” the board said in its message. “She was the right choice when she was named president of Ithaca College last year, and her first six months in office have only reinforced our belief in what an exceptional person and leader she truly is.”

Collado, in a speech at inauguration, highlighted the college’s power to create “exceptional higher education” in the country and defended the institution as a “brave space” to practice intellectual inquiry.

Collado is the second woman to hold IC’s top role in its 125-year history and is the first person of color to do so. She is also the first Dominican-American to lead a U.S. college, the college said in a release.

Collado was announced as the institution’s president in February following a unanimous decision by the IC Board of Trustees and took office on July 1, The Sun previously reported.

After being named president, Collado, who is the first person in her extended-family to graduate from college, talked of adopting a leadership style that was “authentic, visionary, courageous, real, action-oriented and inclusive.”

Her appointment came after the previous president, Tom Rochon, resigned following months of protests and walkouts over his administration’s handling of multiple incidents regarding race. Students walked out in November 2016, protesting what they said was racial profiling by police officers and racially insensitive remarks at a college event.

Collado, who received her undergraduate degree at Vanderbilt University before earning a masters and a Ph.D in clinical psychology at Duke University, served as the executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer at Rutgers University before being named Ithaca College’s president.

In her speech on Saturday, Collado stressed the ideologies of theory, practice and performance, which stem from the college’s founding as the Ithaca Conservatory of Music in 1892.

In today’s political climate, Collado said, there is no “creative practice,” only dogma, highlighting her belief that the college needs to break down barriers to access and increase dialogue.

The new president envisioned Ithaca College as “a private college that truly serves a public good.”

Collado’s husband, A. Van Jordan, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, read a poem titled, “How to Celebrate a Revolution,” that talked about being good to our neighbors in the country’s current political climate, the Ithacan reported. Collado said her husband had surprised her with the reading.

“When boundaries disappear, we can realize the full potential of a residential college campus where everyone is welcome to practice deep intellectual inquiry, and everyone is empowered to collaboratively create and consume knowledge,” Collado said.

A woman who has shattered multiple glass ceilings at Ithaca College and in higher education, Collado expressed her pride regarding the history of Ithaca College and, she said, the fact that the first graduating class from the conservatory had been all-female.

“It is difficult to be the first, to open the doors, either as an individual or as an institution,” Collado said. “But it’s necessary.”

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2017/11/05/ithaca-college-inaugurates-president-collado/feed/3Washington City Council Candidate Accused of Lying About Cornell Degreehttp://cornellsun.com/2017/11/04/washington-city-council-candidate-accused-of-lying-about-cornell-degree/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2017/11/04/washington-city-council-candidate-accused-of-lying-about-cornell-degree/#commentsSun, 05 Nov 2017 00:46:58 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=2306906A candidate for a local government position in Washington state is facing questions over whether she lied about having earned a degree from Cornell in her campaign materials after the University said it could not find any records of her graduating.

Joy Langley, who is running for city council in Mercer Island, Washington, has released a small picture of what she claims is her Cornell degree in philosophy, which she says she earned in 2004 after studying at both Ithaca College and Cornell.

But a Cornell spokesperson, John Carberry, told The Sun that there are no records of Langley graduating from the University.

“After receiving numerous inquiries and speaking directly with Ms. Langley, Cornell University re-examined its digital and paper archives, at the university and college level, and can confirm that we have no record of a person named Joy Langley or Joy Esther Langley attending or graduating from this institution,” Carberry said.

Requests sent to Langley’s campaign email were not returned by the candidate. John Wyble, a member of her campaign, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday after indicating earlier this week that he would be available for an interview to discuss ”Joy’s campaign and the issues with Cornell.”

Langley listed on her LinkedIn profile that she graduated from Cornell, but on Thursday removed any reference to her graduating from the University. On Friday, the reference to her graduating from Cornell was back on her profile.

Langley told the Mercer Island Reporter that she had sealed her records because she was being stalked and that her time in college was a “very scary time for me.”

“That’s the reason why the records are sealed so tightly, that’s the reason why I’m not entirely eager to crack them open again,” she told the newspaper.

A friend of Langley’s, Dan Dimendberg, told The Seattle Times he attended Cornell and George Washington University with Langley, where she earned a master’s degree. Dimendberg told the paper that he is aware of the stalking incident at Cornell that she was referring to.

But Carberry, the Cornell spokesman, said the University can “also confirm that the Office of the University Registrar has never received a request to make private any records related to Ms. Langley.”

When the Mercer Island Reporter, which has endorsed Langley, told the candidate that the University confirmed there were no records of her attending the school, she said she was “very confused,” “shocked,” and that it “seems like I disappeared.”

“The only thing I can chalk it up to is the university must have lost my materials,” she said.

There is a Joy Esther Langley listed as an alumna in Cornell’s people search, The Sun found, although her NetID is no longer active. Cornell did not respond to a list of questions, including why she is listed in the people search if she did not attend the University.

Langley does not appear in the 2004 Cornell yearbook.

The picture Langley posted, which she purports is her degree and was a small image in a collage of her academic accolades, appears to be a bachelor of arts bearing her name. The image appears to bear a Cornell seal and says it was issued in Ithaca on May 30, 2004, the day of commencement that year.

In the current iteration of the Cornell-Ithaca College exchange program, students at Ithaca College can only take a maximum of 12 credits at Cornell and the credits and transcripts are transferred back to Ithaca College. They are required to sign up for a Cornell NetID.

Langley says in one section of her website that she completed her undergraduate studies in philosophy and political science at Cornell, but, in another section, says she received dual degrees from Cornell and Ithaca College in philosophy and political science.

Pamela Hanna, the undergraduate coordinator for the philosophy department, referred a request for comment to media relations.

In a statement on her website last week, Langley said that she has put all of her academic credentials on her website and called her opponents’ questioning of her credentials “attacks” on her character that have changed the tone of the race.

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2017/11/04/washington-city-council-candidate-accused-of-lying-about-cornell-degree/feed/11Ithaca College Strike Called Off After 11 Hours of Bargaininghttp://cornellsun.com/2017/03/28/ithaca-college-strike-called-off-after-11-hours-of-bargaining/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2017/03/28/ithaca-college-strike-called-off-after-11-hours-of-bargaining/#respondTue, 28 Mar 2017 04:53:15 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=1282427After an eleven-hour bargaining session with administration, the Ithaca College contingent faculty called off their two-day strike — originally slated for Tuesday and Wednesday — on Sunday night.

The negotiation session, which involved members of an I.C. bargaining committee and I.C. administration, addressed much of what the contingent faculty union wanted, according to a member on the bargaining committee who wished to remain anonymous.

These negotiations are a long time coming. According to members of the Ithaca College bargaining committee, the negotiated contract brings a pay increase for part-time faculty and more stable appointments to full-time faculty at the college.

However, the tensions between the faculty and the administration are not all put to rest. Charges with the National Labor Relations Board for unfair labor practices still stand, largely referring to Ithaca College firing contingent faculty members after they formed a union in June 2016. Three former contingent professors — who were also active union members — have filed cases through the Cornell Labor Law Clinic, and these cases are still under review with the National Labor Relations Board.

Prof. Rachel Kaufman, writing, Ithaca College, explained that the relation between the failure of I.C. administration to renew contracts with faculty members who were members of the union is the basis of the NLRB charge.

“As I understand, the most active members [of the bargaining committee] were let go,” she said. “To see them be let go so unceremoniously right after they were really active in forming the union — basically that’s what the Law Clinic took a look at.”

Calling Off The Strike

The end of bargaining and the calling a faculty strike at Ithaca College came at the eleventh hour of negotiations.

After 18 months of negotiations with the I.C. administration, the college and the contingent faculty union finally settled on a contract Sunday night at the end of an eleven-hour bargaining session, according to bargaining committee member Prof. Tom Schneller ’08, music, Ithaca College.

I.C. contingent faculty — representing more than 30 percent of the college’s faculty — have spent over a year negotiating a pay increase for part-time faculty and greater job stability for full-time faculty.

The contingent faculty strike, scheduled for March 28 and 29, was a move that was meant to push the administration to concede greater changes in negotiating, according to Kaufman.

Kaufman noted that the union had seen concessions from the administration following a protest held on campus in February, but she said that it was “clearly going to take public pressure to make [the administration] do the right thing.”

“What we’ve seen in bargaining is that the only time that they’ve really had a significant move is after we’ve taken action and put pressure on them — that seems to be what they really respond to,” she added. “We have spent so many months making significant, significant decreases in our pay proposals and making significant concessions in other proposals only to see them just come back with stock no.”

Schneller said the strength of the contingent faculty union and the contract that came out of negotiations could set the tone for colleges and universities across the country.

As colleges rely more and more on contingent labor, Schneller explained, this poses a threat for students interested in entering the academic workforce. The contract that was just negotiated can be a step in changing this trend and thus “a very positive thing,” he said.

“[Students] do not want to go into academia anymore because it is becoming increasingly less likely that you’re actually going to land a tenure-track job,” Schneller added. “So there has to be these protections. The union provides a degree of stability that is really essential for many college [and] university professors across this country.”

Prof. Brody Burroughs, art, Ithaca College, added that community involvement in this process has been significant to reach this point.

“We would never have been able to get this far without all of our allies: the student body, our colleagues at I.C., our community at the Worker’s Center and across the hill over at Cornell,” Burroughs said. “It was really community support on and off campus that really brought the spotlight to the issue that we’re facing.”

Cornell’s Labor Law Clinic and the NLRB

Four Cornell law students are leading the charge in filing the unfair labor practice charges against the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of the I.C. contingent faculty bargaining committee.

The students are part of the Cornell Labor Law Clinic, which got involved in the issue in January and is dealing exclusively with the full-time adjunct professors in its legal actions.

Though the bargaining session did discontinue any allegations relating to bargaining, it did not dissolve charges of unfair labor practice, according to Prof. Angela Cornell, law, the supervising lawyer for the Cornell Labor Law Clinic.

“The Labor Law Clinic tackles traditional labor law questions, like the pending charge with the National Labor Relations Board,” Cornell said. “The NLRB is the federal agency charged with enforcing the law that protects workers when they try to organize to improve their terms and conditions of employment.”

According to Cornell, the discrimination charges under the National Labor Relations Act are not being dropped simply because negotiations were reached, and the Board could still proceed with a hearing.

“Depending on how the Board process goes, it could go to a hearing,” she said, adding that if the Board issues agrees with the Labor Law Clinic and issues a complaint, the case could go before an administrative law judge.

Dwight Mitchell, grad, one of the students participating in filing the charges, said that primary complaint of the bargaining committee prior to the bargaining session on Sunday was that the administration was ignoring attempted negotiations.

“[The contingent faculty] formed a union in June 2016, and they began to engage in negotiations,” he said. “We have some professors who have worked at Ithaca College for seven years, and all of the sudden, ‘coincidentally’ after these professors formed a union, the administration did not want to negotiate with them or renew their contracts.”

This was the main provocation for the strike, which was called off after contracts were indeed renewed, according to a member of the bargaining committee who wished to remain anonymous.

“The strike was mainly over having a collective bargaining agreement, a contract that significantly improved the lives of a majority of contingent faculty on campus, and that happened,” the bargaining committee member explained. “However, there are still outstanding issues, which is that the majority of the full-time bargaining unit has not been renewed. … That’s out of the contract, but it’s still a big issue, and that’s why the National Labor Relations Board is still investigating that.”

The bargaining committee member also noted that, though the strike was called off, the I.C. faculty charges against the administration are an ongoing element of this labor struggle.

“The National Labor Relations Board is investigating the fact that the majority of the full-time contingent faculty bargaining committee was let go, which means that their appointments for next year were not renewed,” he said. “It’s our strong belief that this was due to discrimination due to their union activity.”

According to Mitchell, the NLRB could get back to the Labor Law Clinic in a matter of weeks about the unfair labor practice charge, which could proceed to a hearing.

“We’ve taken affidavits of all of our clients and we’re waiting for the determination of the board,” he said. “We’re waiting to hear their determination on the allegations. If they find that our claims have merit, then we’ll proceed to the next steps, which will most likely be a hearing on the case.”

The hearing, according to Mitchell, could lead to remedies paid by the Ithaca College administration. The remedies could range from a website posting about unfair labor practices to reinstating the faculty whose contracts were not reinstated.

“I think we’ve presented enough evidence to support our case,” Mitchell added. “I’m hopeful that we will advance to the next stage, but it’s truly up to the Board at this point. We’ve done our homework and we’ve presented the best case on behalf of our clients.”
The Labor Law Clinic has not formally attempted to reach out to I.C. administration, according to Mitchell, because this is not a component of the process.

“They will have an opportunity to submit a position statement and present their documentary evidence,” Cornell added. “The Board will consider both sides. It’s not a one-sided process. The Board will take their affidavits and review their documents. It’s pretty comprehensive.”

As faculty celebrate the gains they have guaranteed in the contract, they recognize the tremendous work that went into the process, including work still to come in continuing cooperations and processes between faculty and the administration.

“Intense is a good word to describe it,” Burroughs said. “It was not just an eleven-hour session but nearly eighteen months of work on this contract. People like to automatically assume that all of that frustration and work is just one force opposing another but more often than not it’s just trying to hammer out solutions.”

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2017/03/28/ithaca-college-strike-called-off-after-11-hours-of-bargaining/feed/0Protest Erupts at Ithaca College as Faculty Demand Equal Pay for Contingent Facultyhttp://cornellsun.com/2017/02/24/protest-erupts-on-accepted-student-day-as-ithaca-college-faculty-demand-equal-pay-for-contingent-faculty/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/24/protest-erupts-on-accepted-student-day-as-ithaca-college-faculty-demand-equal-pay-for-contingent-faculty/#respondFri, 24 Feb 2017 17:31:31 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=1128486This post has been updated.
As prospective students arrived at Ithaca College for an admitted students event, the college entrance was surrounded on all sides by protesters demanding equal pay and job security for faculty.

The timing of the protest and the accepted students event was deliberate, according to Prof. Rachel Kaufman, writing, Ithaca College, as an effort to “ramp up the pressure,” she said.

“[The college is] selling a message to the school to accepted students about their priority being education,” Kaufman said. “And they’re just not showing that at the bargaining table. We’re looking to expose that and let prospective students know that this is a college that has a choice right now about whether to be a leader or not in higher education.”

I.C. faculty were joined by students from both Ithaca College and Cornell along with labor activists from all over Ithaca, including Cornell Organization for Labor Action and Cornell Graduate Students United.

“We’re not about to just let these things happen to our professors when there’s clearly injustices happening and they’re not being treated fairly,” said Kaylee Warner, a student at I.C.

Participation in the protest for COLA member, Izzy Pottinger ’19 was crucial regardless of school affiliation.

“It’s really important even though we don’t go to I.C. to be active in every community that you can because when one person’s rights are taken away or job stability taken away, it creates a precedent for everyone’s to be taken away,” she said.

Demanding equal pay for equal work, protesters argued that learning and teaching ought to remain the core value of the University, part-time faculty must be granted equal pay to full-time faculty and there must be greater job security across the board.

Protesters spoke out against the inflation of the administration at the cost of professors, fighting back against what they called the “administrative octopus” raising the price of tuition but not the salaries of its faculty.

“Right now, I get paid about 40 percent less to teach the exact same class as my full-time contingent counterpart,” Kaufman said. “The students certainly don’t expect me to teach 40 percent less. They don’t pay for 40 percent less tuition.”

This protest comes as a response to mounting tensions between I.C. faculty and the administration.

Some Cornell graduate students protested not only for union solidarity and labor advocacy but also because of the parallels they saw between graduate students and contingent faculty, said Juan Guevara grad, a member of CGSU.

For Vera Khovanskaya grad, a member of CGSU, compensation does not reflect the reliance both Cornell and I.C. place on graduate students and contingent faculty.

“The University relies on a steady stream of people who aren’t getting paid very much for the work they do,” Khovanskaya said. “They have to hire more graduate students and more lecturers to fill courses that professors would teach because they can spend less money doing so. People are always going to come in and fill the spots.”

This protest preceded a federally-mediated bargaining sessions with college administrators to negotiate pay parity for part-time faculty and job security for full time faculty.

The outcome of this bargaining session comes with the pressure of a contingent faculty strike dependent on the proposals presented, The Sun previously reported.

However, the appointment of I.C.’s new president made some protesters more optimistic about the outcome of bargaining.

“Her core values seemed really aligned with ours. She talked about dignity for all people. She talked about being from a family of laborers,” Kaufman said. “We certainly hope the college will be moving towards her direction rather than continuing to follow the failed policies of Rochon.”

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/24/protest-erupts-on-accepted-student-day-as-ithaca-college-faculty-demand-equal-pay-for-contingent-faculty/feed/0Cornell Graduate Students United and Cornell Organization for Labor Action Stand By Ithaca College in Contingent Faculty Strikehttp://cornellsun.com/2017/02/23/cornell-graduate-students-united-and-cornell-organization-for-labor-action-stand-by-ithaca-college-in-contingent-faculty-strike/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/23/cornell-graduate-students-united-and-cornell-organization-for-labor-action-stand-by-ithaca-college-in-contingent-faculty-strike/#respondThu, 23 Feb 2017 05:19:49 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=1122409Cornell Graduate Students United and Cornell Organization for Labor Action advocated in support of the contingent faculty union and potential strike at Ithaca College by publishing a statement in The Ithacan on Monday.

“We, the members of Cornell Graduate Student Union and Cornell Organization for Labor Action, stand in solidarity with the Ithaca College Contingent Faculty,” the statement read. “We, as current and future workers from Cornell University, remind the Ithaca College Administration that the fundamental role of the university is to critically challenge the status quo, which reserves justice, equality and dignity for a small minority.”

An open letter published on Feb. 9 from The Ithaca College Contingent Faculty Union Bargaining Committee said that Ithaca College represents “a ‘precariat’ of demoralized and underpaid contingent professors.”

As a response to this burgeoning stress, IC faculty voted to create a union in 2015 to “fight collectively for better pay and job security,” according to the letter.

The Ithaca College administration has responded to this call and engaged in bargaining talks with two contingent faculty unions — involving both part-time and full-time faculty.

The administration has received numerous proposals advocating for equal pay and job security, though no ultimate compromises have been reached.

The contingent faculty union held a deciding vote on Feb. 13 and 14, with 88 percent voting in favor of authorizing a strike. Now, nearly eighteen months since unionizing in 2015, bargaining committees for IC and the contingent faculty union will have one more meeting with a federal mediator to settle on a proposal with the pressure of a strike hanging in the balance.

The Ithaca College administration released a statement reacting to the vote to authorize a strike saying that the bargaining team is “disappointed.” Ithaca College plans to hire people to fill faculty positions in the event of the strike, though many departments and students at the college have voiced solidarity with the contingent faculty union.

CGSU and COLA released a joint statement saying they would “stand in solidarity with the Ithaca College Contingent Faculty and unconditionally support all future labor actions undertaken by them.”

COLA member Caro Achar ’18 said that their organization “has made clear to the organizers of the Ithaca College full-time and part-time faculty that we will provide assistance to them in whatever way we can.”

“The national labor movement is so much about solidarity and community advocacy,” Achar said. “We felt it is our responsibility as both advocates for workers’ rights and students to support the contingent faculty at Ithaca College.”

Achar also acknowledged the reality that “the contingent faculty at Ithaca College, who compose almost half of the total faculty at IC, face conditions of precarious, insecure and underpaid working and living conditions.”

Vera Khovanskaya grad, a member of CGSU, also spoke of the need for solidarity.

“As a member of CGSU, I am happy to participate in actions like this and I was very impressed with the turnout from CGSU, Cornell Coalition for Labor Action, and the IC Students for Labor Actions,” Khovanskaya said.

Khovanskaya added that the “increased labor action happening across university campuses” is important for “engagement in the struggle of contingent faculty has sharpened awareness about the need for labor protection and solidarity with academic workers.”

Sarah Grunberg, an instructor in the department of sociology at IC, told The Sun that the progress made from negotiation and arbitration was inefficient, thus elevated action could encourage greater change.

“While some work can be done at the table, we know that the real change has occurred through the incredible work that has been done on the ground by campuses nationwide, including organizing, student protests and strike actions,” she said.

Prof. Keith Hannon, media studies, Ithaca College, wrote a recent op-ed published in Ithaca Voice that placed the situation in a national context.

“If we are to maintain our status as a progressive community that places humanity above profitability, we have to treat our local educators with the respect and admiration they deserve,” he wrote. “As we brace ourselves for the Betsy Devos era, Tompkins County has an opportunity to prove how much we value education by standing up in support of Ithaca College’s adjunct professors.”

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/23/cornell-graduate-students-united-and-cornell-organization-for-labor-action-stand-by-ithaca-college-in-contingent-faculty-strike/feed/0Ithaca College Announces Shirley Collado as its Ninth Presidenthttp://cornellsun.com/2017/02/22/ithaca-college-announces-shirley-collado-as-its-ninth-president/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/22/ithaca-college-announces-shirley-collado-as-its-ninth-president/#respondWed, 22 Feb 2017 17:26:03 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=1120764On Wednesday morning, the Ithaca College Board of Trustees announced that Dr. Shirley M. Collado will be the ninth president of Ithaca College.

Collado was selected by an unanimous vote of the board, according to Tom Grape, the chair of the IC Board of Trustees. Collado will start her tenure as president of Ithaca College on July 1.

“I am deeply honored to have been selected as the next president of such an accomplished, energetic, and deeply engaged community,” said Collado in a press release. “I admire Ithaca College’s devotion to student growth and success, its resolve in facing difficult problems together head-on, and its desire to make sure the college and its graduates make a powerful impact on the world.”

Collado, the daughter of Dominican immigrants and the first in her entire extended family to finish college, said that this moment means an enormous amount to her because she believes in the power of education. She said that her leadership style involves being authentic, visionary, courageous, real, action-oriented and inclusive in order to address difficult challenges.

Jim Nolan, the chair of the search committee, said that the process of finding a new president took longer than expected, but Collado truly embodies the four core values the committee was looking for: collaboration, inclusiveness, respect and commitment to the common good.

Andrew Kosinuk, a member of the search committee from the Office of Public Safety, said that when looking for a candidate, the committee focused on trying to gauge what the relationship would be between this individual and the IC community.

He said that he knew that Collado would be a good fit for the college when Kosinuk heard Collado say that she wanted every student to be able to see themselves in her.

For Kosinuk, Collado is someone who wants to forge real, meaningful relationships with the community and got at the heart of what they were trying to do.

Prof. Claire Gleitman, English, Ithaca College — a member of the search committee — said that Collado has a combination of theory and practice, of liberal arts and professional training, that defines the Ithaca College experience.

Collado holds a B.S. in human and organizational development and psychology from Vanderbilt University, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in clinical psychology from Duke University. She has held executive leadership roles in higher education for 16 years and currently serves as the executive vice chancellor and chief operating officer at Rutgers University–Newark.

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/22/ithaca-college-announces-shirley-collado-as-its-ninth-president/feed/0LETTER TO THE EDITOR | Solidarity with the IC Contingent Facultyhttp://cornellsun.com/2017/02/21/letter-to-the-editor-solidarity-with-the-ic-contingent-faculty/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/21/letter-to-the-editor-solidarity-with-the-ic-contingent-faculty/#commentsWed, 22 Feb 2017 04:03:14 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=1118348The Ithaca College Contingent Faculty, including full-time and part-time faculty, have authorized labor actions up to and including a strike. The authorization vote came last week, after 18 months of bargaining failed to persuade the Ithaca College administration to commit to the fundamental labor principles of “pay parity” and “equal pay for equal work.” The faculty members facing contingent work conditions, amounting to almost half of the current number of faculty at Ithaca College, held a rally on Monday, Feb 20th at the main entrance of IC campus. The rally preceded two days of scheduled mediation with the College administration and demonstrated the group’s collective power as well as public support for their insistent struggle to secure fair working and living conditions.

We, the members of Cornell Graduate Students United and Cornell Organization for Labor Action, stand in solidarity with the Ithaca College Contingent Faculty and unconditionally support all future labor actions undertaken by them.

We insist that no worker deserves the precarious, insecure and flexible working and living conditions to which full-time and part-time contingent faculty at Ithaca College are subjected. We reject the neoliberal capitalist narrative of inevitable austerity and its politics of deunionization that individualize structural problems, isolate workers, and depoliticize the workplace in an attempt to repress the collective power of organized labor. In this environment and historically, labor actions, especially strikes, are powerful expression of workers’ control of their own labor. By retracting their labor from profit-entranced employers, the workers, once organized in a democratic and bottom-up fashion, demonstrate that they are not commodities and that they can and should determine their working conditions in order to reach a just and sustainable society for all.

We, as current and future workers from Cornell University, remind the Ithaca College Administration that the fundamental role of the university is to critically challenge the status quo, which reserves justice, equality, and dignity for a small minority, and not to perpetuate it; and that their fundamental responsibility is to ensure the wellbeing of all their workers and not the direct or indirect corporate profits of their Board of Trustees.

We recognize that all labor actions by our colleagues and professors at Ithaca College are actions against the corporatization of higher education in the US, against the crisis-ridden capitalist system, and against the various forms of violence, dispossession, and insecurity that neoliberal corporate interests left and right inflict upon laborers worldwide. Their struggle is not separate but furthers solidarity with current struggles for justice and equality — including our unionization efforts at Cornell for the graduate students, and the struggles of Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, and immigrant workers in and across the US, drivers and public transit workers in India and Argentina, telecommunication workers in Sri Lanka, purged academicians in Turkey, women in Iceland and Kenya, and millions of civilians in Syria and in Romania.

The Ithaca College Contingent Faculty are rising up for better working and living conditions. They are rising so that they are able to provide the education that their students deserve; so that their students do not face the same or worse precarious working conditions that they now face, in the future. And they are rising up to remind all of us of organized labor’s power to act for justice, equality and democracy.

We, the members of Cornell Graduate Students United and Cornell Organization for Labor Action, embrace their labor actions as ours and commit to further their struggle — our struggle — with them.

We call on all members of Cornell University and the Ithaca community to support Ithaca College faculty in their struggle!

We call on the Ithaca College Administration to immediately fulfill “pay parity” and “equal right for equal work” principles at the bargaining table!

]]>http://cornellsun.com/2017/02/21/letter-to-the-editor-solidarity-with-the-ic-contingent-faculty/feed/2Nazaire Family Demands Life Sentence for Alleged Murdererhttp://cornellsun.com/2016/11/07/nazaire-family-demands-life-sentence-for-alleged-murderer/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss
http://cornellsun.com/2016/11/07/nazaire-family-demands-life-sentence-for-alleged-murderer/#commentsTue, 08 Nov 2016 03:59:00 +0000http://cornellsun.com/?p=693683Reacting to the Ithaca Police Department’s Monday arrest of Nagee Green for the murder of Anthony Nazaire, the victim’s family said they are “not satisfied” with the charges levied against the alleged murderer.

Nazaire’s mother, Katie Toussaint, said that, while the family is grateful to the IPD for arresting Green, they feel the suspect deserves to serve a life sentence. The victim’s sister, Kiara Nazaire, called Green “an animal” that “needs to be caged up like an animal.”

“[Green] is not an innocent person,” Nazaire said. “I feel like it was something that he had in his heart to just do. He is a murderer.”

The Nazaire family plans to “go public” and speak to many different news organizations, Kiara Nazaire said. She added that the whole family will be present through all court proceedings.

“We are going to be there,” she said. “The whole family will be there. There’s going to be a lot of people from [Anthony’s] school — his classmates, his friends from Ithaca College. We have different students from different colleges who are going to be there, too.”

After looking through Green’s Facebook page, Nazaire said she found several messages that “really were not very comfortable to even read.”

“[Green] was sending threatening messages to college students in Ithaca both male and female,” she said. “He was just doing so many things that would actually scare you as a human being to actually be around him.”

Green was active on Facebook both before and after the murder of Anthony Nazaire.

“I swear to GOD ima smack flames outta every female and male in Ithaca that got my name in they mouth, friends and all, let’s see who not pussy … I’m waiting,” Green said on Facebook two days before the Aug. 28 murder.

Green posted a status on Oct. 7 calling Ithaca the “only place where snitches can roam around freely.” Two days later, he wrote on Facebook that “these niggas snitching” and “I’m putting names on BLAST as soon as I find out more info and whopping ass.”

On Oct. 16, Green wrote on Facebook that he would “have to confront every single person in Ithaca with my name in they mouth,” and last Thursday, Green posted saying “the devil in me … I can feel him.”

The Nazaire family said they are creating a scholarship that aims to help “young kids” pursuing a college education and career who are limited by financial resources.

“We would like to honor them and help them go to college under the Anthony Nazaire scholarship,” Nazaire said.

Both family members were adamant that they will continue to demand that Green serve life in jail.

“What I want for [Green] is life in jail because my son will never be able to see the sun shine,” Toussaint said. “He will never be able to walk this earth anymore, but this criminal, he gets to live, he gets to be sleeping in a comfortable bed, he gets food, you understand? He gets to speak to his loved ones.”

Toussaint said Green just “wanted to show his power” and “how much of a devil he is” the night he decided to murder her son.

“[Anthony] was an innocent kid,” she said. “[Green] just wanted to kill that night, that’s what he did. He killed my son and I’m not going to sit and just accept any sentence. I want life for him, just like my son cannot walk this earth no more. I don’t want him to see the other side of the fence. Plain and simple. That’s all I’m asking for.”